
(lass 



PUKSKNTKl) BY 



? 



i 




Joaquin Miller 




so HERE THEN IS A LITTLE 
JOURNEY TO THE HOME OF 

JOAQUIN MILLER 

By ELBERT HUBBARD 

ALSO A STUDY OF THE 
MAN AND HIS WORK 

By GEORGE WHARTON JAMES 




TO WHICH IS APPENDED A SLIGHT 
STUDY OF THE MAN WHO WROTE 
THE STUDY. BY FRA ELBERTUS. 
WITH SUNDRY SELECTED POEMS 
BY THE POET, GIVING A GOODLY 
TASTE OF HIS RARE QUALITY 

DONE INTO A BOOK BY THE ROYCROFTERS AT 
THEIR SHOP WHICH IS IN EAST AURORA, N. Y. 









Copyright 1903 

by 
Elbert Hubbard 



In men whom men pronounce as ill, 

I find so much of goodness still ; 

In men whom men pronounce divine, 

I find so much of sin and blot ; 
I hesitate to draw the line 

Between the two, when God has not. 

— ^Joaquin Miller. 



THE LITTLE JOURNEY 



THE LITTLE JOURNEY 

HE wrote the greatest poem ever written 
by an American : He lives at Oakland, 
**on the Hights," and his name is 
Joaquin Miller. 
We took the street car to the end of the line, and 
the conductor pointed to the road that led up the 
hill. "Take that road and sail on," he said, and 
smiled in a way that indicated he had sprung the 
allusion before and was pleased with it. 
We followed the road up the hillside. The day 
was one of God's own, done by hand, just to show 
what He could do. The sun was warm and bright ; 
a gentle breeze, cool and refreshing, blew in with 
messages from the sea. 

The road wound around the hill, and led upward 
by a gentle rise — back and forth, around and 
back, and soon we saw the roadway over which 
we had passed, a hundred feet below, with gar- 
dens between. Gardens everywhere ! Gardens 
lined off with boxwood and fenced by nodding 
roses. Just above were orange and acacia trees, 

1 



JOAQUIN white with blossoms that showered their petals 
MILLER upon the passer-by. 

And still we climbed. Up and up by that gentle 
ascent, up and up and up we went. The air was 
full of perfume and drowsy with the hum of bees. 
Birds twittered in the thick foliage, and at a bend 
in the winding road we saw a flock of quail run- 
ning ahead of us, and suddenly disappear among 
the masses of green. 

Sandy was interested in finding out where the 
quail had gone; Ben mopped his forehead, and 
with coat on arm, talked of the Higher Criticism, 
the wonders of the universe, and how beauty was 
free for all — his preacher-habit still upon him. 
Q Brudder and I turned and looked down upon the 
panorama spread out at our feet. Here was color 
— gorgeous, superb — the lilac of the wistaria 
winding in and out among the roses, while pale 
pink azalias, delicate, esthetic and spiritual, trusted 
to our power of discernment to single them out 
from the more obtrusive masses of magnolia that 
everywhere sprang warm and voluptuous, heavy 
with perfume. 

2 



A little further away the color was lost in masses JOAQUIN 
of green that pushed off into a dark purple. Spires MILLER 
and steeples, and giant palms lifting their fronded 
forms in air, told us the city was down there, five 
miles away. And then there came a line of dark 
blue that wound in and out, and marked the bay, 
where little play-ships stood in the offing — their 
prows all pointing one way. Submerged in the 
blue ether across the bay lay the city of San Fran- 
cisco — her plots and her schemes, her ambitions 
and her hot desires, her tears of disappointment 
and her groans and griefs, all veiled and lost be- 
neath the translucent purple-blue coverlet of this 
lazy summer day. 

Over to the left, clinging to the hillside, was Sau- 
salito, replica in little of the villages that line the 
Bay of Naples. There at Sausalito lives Bill Fav- 
ille. Prince of Architects, making much monies, 
they say, over in the city, but hiding away here 
on the hillside in a cottage of three rooms, where 
Mrs. Bill escapes the servant-girl question and the 
jealousies of the Smart Set by living the life that 
is genuine. I will not say, **God bless Mr. and 

3 



JOAQUIN Mrs. Bill," because I know that He has and will. 
MILLER Q Just beyond Richardson's Bay, where phantom 
ships toss on the tide and wait for cargoes that 
never come, is San Raphael, and Dick Hotaling's 
ranch — fairest of playthings — three thousand acres 
— belonging to Dick and his friends, where plates 
are always placed for me and the Cublet, and 
chants from the Good Stuff are done in minor 
key as the sun goes down through the Golden 
Gate, with Dick's permission. 
Beyond is Mt. Tamalpias, and just over there is 
Mt. Diablo, where Preacher Ben says I should go 
on pious errand bent. 
Ben is a joker. 

We trudge on up the hill, carrying coats and hats in 
hand. The air grows warmer, the flowers are even 
more plentiful. 

We have been walking nearly two hours, and 
must have come five miles. The road skirts through 
a dense mass of dwarfed oak that covers the 
driveway as the elms arch Chapel Street in New 
Haven, only more so. 

"It is like this," said Preacher Ben; and then he 

4 



began to explain to me the Law of Paradox. JOAQUIN 
Q '*The collection will now be taken," came a MILLER 
deep bass voice from out the greeny gloom of the 
close-growing oaks. 

We started, looked, and there on a seat not 
twenty feet away sat the Poet. You could never 
mistake him — he looks like no other man on earth ; 
personality surrounds him like an aura. 
We stared. 

" Come here and sit down, you rogues," called 
the voice. 

The Poet did not arise — why should he ? We had 
always known each other, though we had never 
met before. We shook hands and Ben and I took 
seats on the rustic bench beside him, Brudder lay 
on the grass at his feet, while Sandy renewed his 
interest in quail. 

*' Here I Ve been waiting an hour," said the Poet, 
" I put on my Sunday clothes and came down to 
meet you, but I had about given you up. Ben said 
you were coming, but preachers are such dam liars 
— they promise Paradise and mansions in the skies 
and all kinds of things which they can never sup- 

5 



JOAQUIN ply — I was afraid that you were not coming!" 
MILLER He arose. He is six feet high to an inch, and in 
spite of his sixty-two summers, straight as Sandy 
and just as strong. 

He stood off and talked to us. He knew we were 
admiring him — how could he help it ! His white 
beard fell to his waist, and his mustaches were 
curled up savagely after the manner of Emperor 
William, while his wide sombrero was cocked 
carelessly to the northwest. His long, yellow hair 
fell to his shoulders. The suit he wore was of 
yellow corduroy that matched his hair, and his 
russet-top boots, fringed at the side, matched the 
corduroys. The buttons on his coat were made of 
nuggets of Klondike gold; his belt was of buck- 
skin with a big silver buckle, and between the 
bottom of his vest and the top of his trousers was 
a six-inch interregnum of blue flannel shirt. A 
bright red necktie blew out from under the white 
beard ; the trousers were caught over the ears of 
the dainty boots ; one hand wore a gauntlet and 
its mate was carried in a small, white hand, upon the 
middle finger of which was an immense diamond. 

6 



CJ * ' You are looking at my ring — worth a thousand JOAQUIN 
dollars or more, they say — given to me by a dear MILLER 
friend now in Purgatory, if Ben knows his business. 
Q " I wear that ring in memory of a great friend- 
ship, and also because I love the diamond for its 
own sake — it symbols infinity, eternity. The dia- 
mond is pure carbon ; at least, we can resolve it 
back into carbon, but this done we cannot make it 
over into a diamond. It is like life, we can take it 
away, but we cannot give it. The secret of the 
diamond is not ours — it took an eternity to pro- 
duce it. I am as old as the diamond and I shall 
never die." 

We followed on up the hillside. The sun was sink- 
ing down into the Golden Gate in a burst of 
glory. **It's all mine," said the Poet, and waved 
his hand toward the western landscape. 
We came to a queer old stile and followed along 
a grass-grown pathway. Soon a whole little vil- 
lage smiled upon us from a terraced outlook, that 
seemed surrounded and shut in by tall pines. The 
houses were about as large as dry goods cases — 
say eight by twelve. There were a dozen of them, 

7 



JOAQUIN owned by the Poet, and of all sorts and colors 
MILLER and shapes; all not worth so much as that dia- 
mond ring. Over every little house ran a regular 
riot of roses, red and white, in a mad race for 
supremacy. In one of the tiny cottages lives the 
Poet. We entered — there was only one room, a 
rag carpet rug in the center, a plain pine table, a 
bed in the corner. All around the room hung the 
Poet's clothes. 

"I am an ascetic in everything but duds," ex- 
plained the Poet, as he saw Brudder vulcanizing. 
"You see, folks are always giving me things — 
there is an Esquimau suit of seal-skin, then comes 
that leather hunting shirt and buckskin breeches. 
The next is my second-best suit of corduroy, the 
next is a velvet coat given to me by the Woman's 
Club of Denver, when I lectured for them. As 
you see, I have ten pairs of boots and six pairs of 
moccasins. That ministerial black suit I wear when 
I speak in Ben's pulpit." 

There was a Mexican saddle and bridle in the 
comer and bits of horse jewelry hung around on 
hooks. 

8 



"And your books?" I ventured. C^ "Books?" JOAQUIN 
said the Poet, "Books? to hell with books! Books MILLER 
are for people who cannot think." 
It will be observed that the Poet's language is 
as picturesque as his raiment. His words fitted him 
like the feathers on a duck. Ben tried a swear 
word, but it was strangely out of place, and as for 
myself, I only cuss in print. 
Joaquin Miller is the most charming poseur on this 
terrestrial ball, but he has posed so long and so well 
that his poses have now become natural, so he is 
no longer a poseur. 

Up on the topmost crest of the hill he has built 
a monument, square, stem, rude, crude, and im- 
mensely strong, with frowning battlements and 
menacing turrets. The weather-worn rocks used in 
its construction gave the building a Druidic look. It 
took three years to build this monument, the work 
being done mostly by the Poet's own hands. It is 
twelve feet square at the base, and about twen- 
ty-five feet high. What it was all for has been a 
question much discussed in the neighborhood. 
The Poet is very proud of this monument — it 

9 



JOAQUIN really is a superb bit of handicraft for an amateur. 
MILLER I saw the craftsman's pride beaming out of the blue 
eyes, and so I worked the conversation around and 
lighted the fuse. And here is the story : 
I started to build that monument to the memory 
of Adam. I thought that this spot must have been 
the Garden of Eden — and anyway, the Garden 
of Eden was no finer than this. And then I had 
caught glimpses of God walking around here in the 
cool of the day, and so my Chinese helpers and 
I began the monument. 

Then one day Preacher Ben came up here and 
told me what a bad man Adam was, and how 
Adam and his wife had made all the trouble that 
was in the world. 

Then I cast around to think who was the next 
best man. And I dropped on Moses. 
Moses was the greatest leader of men who ever 
lived. He led his people out of captivity — made 
them free, and there is nothing finer than to give 
freedom. 

So I said to my Chinese helpers, ** Here goes to 
Moses!" 

Moses was the son of Pharaoh's daughter, you 
know — a love-child — his father an Israelite. She 
hid her baby away in the bulrushes, and then went 

10 



down and found him at the proper time, and JOAQUIN 
told one of the most touching little stories MILLER 
ever related — very beautiful and the most nat- 
ural thing on earth. The child vv^as brought up a 
prince, but his heart was with the Israelites, and 
you know how he finished an Egyptian that he 
saw putting the thing on an Israelite. Oh, Moses 
had the quality — I expect to meet him in Elysium 
some day — he is our kind. 

How about the mistakes of Moses? Look you, 
my boy, Moses made no mistakes. Don't imagine 
that a man does not know just because he does not 
explain. Moses knew, but he gave out just what 
his people were ready for, and no more. He used 
to say, ** God told me this and God told me that," 
which was all right. God tells me things every 
day — He whispers to me at night, and often I get 
up and go out under the stars and wait for His 
messages. 

All of the Mosaic Laws were for the good of the 
people, sanitary, sensible and right. Christianity is 
a graft on Judaism, and it all traces to Moses. 
Q Mose was what you might call an ornitholog- 
ical rara avis. 

When he died, God was the undertaker — no one 
knows where he was buried, but I am of the belief 

11 



JOAQUIN that he was buried right here — exactly under this 
MILLER monument, and so far my assumption has not been 
disproved. 

Now we will unlock the little iron door and take 
a look inside of this monument. You see these 
steel grate-bars — looks like a furnace does n't it ? 
Well, that is because it is — a crematory. My body 
is to be placed up on top, that steel cover is to be 
lifted so as to get a draft through, and twenty-five 
cords of good, dry redwood will do the business. 
There is the wood corded over there — we use a 
little now and then, but we never let the pile get 
below twenty-five cords. 

I have invited all the preachers and priests, joss- 
house men and sky-pilots in Oakland, Alameda 
and San Francisco to attend my funeral. I have 
written the funeral address myself, and the preach- 
ers are to draw cuts to see who shall read it to 
the people. Yes, the people are invited, too, and 
if the funeral takes place on a school day, I have 
arranged that the children shall all have a holiday. 
I love children and children love me — they come 
up here sometimes by the hundreds and I read to 
them. I never caused a child a tear. All the mean 
things I have been guilty of were directed towards 
grown-up men. 

12 



No sir, no one shall wear mourning for me — JOAQUIN 
death is only a change of condition. And Nature's MILLER 
changes are for the better. I want all denomina- 
tions represented at my funeral, because I belong 
to every sect. I sympathize with all superstitions 
and creeds, because there is really but one religion 
— these seeming differences are only a matter of 
definitions evolved by certain temperaments. I 
worship Joss, Jehovah, Jove, Jesus, Mary the 
Blessed Mother, Ali Baba, and Mary Baker Eddy. 
All of the gods were once men, and these names 
all stand for certain things to certain people — each 
means all to you that you can put into it. A name 
is a sound, a puff of air, but behind the epiglottis, 
the eustachian tube, the palate, the tongue and 
the roof of the mouth, is a thought — I sympathize 
with that thought, even with error, because error 
is the pathway to truth, and so error is a phase of 
truth. I am Francis of Assissi, Novalis, Plato, 
Swedenborg, Porphyry and Buffalo Bill. I fill my- 
self with aceticism, get drunk on abnegation, re- 
cite my own poems, and dance a two-step inspired 
by self-sacrifice. I am touched with madness, but 
sane enough to know it. I have a good time on 
nothing, and although I live 'way up here alone, yet 
I am always in the company of good people — 

13 



JOAQUIN are n't you here? I am the Universal Man, and so 
MILLER are you, and everybody is, only they don't know 
it. What 's that Chinaman yelling about ? Oh, he 
says breakfast is ready — I forgot. 

When you visit Joaquin Miller, you are not shown 
to your room — you are given a house. The Poet 
puts his head out of the door and gives an " Al- 
lehoiah-ala-hoohoo-oo ! " and out hops an Orien- 
tal, all dressed in white, and takes you to your 
cottage. You perform your ablutions (I trust I use 
the right word) at the spring, or the horse trough, 
and when you get back that heathen Chinee has 
opened your suit-case, brushed your clothes, hung 
out your night-shirt, placed half a bushel of 
cut roses on the table and disappeared. In ten 
minutes he comes back in to tell you in pigeon 
English that supper is ready. 
The dining-room is in one of the cottages, set 
apart for a kitchen. The Chinee is a superb cook. 
Our table is set out under an arbor of roses, and 
we have vegetables to spare, and fruits galore, 
and nuts to crack, and a tin bucket of milk cooled 

in the running water of the spring, and loaves of 

14 



brown bread which we break up in chunks; but JOAQUIN 
there is no meat. Q The Poet leaves us — he has MILLER 
work to do — but scarcely do we get back to the 
cottage, which we already call Home, before the 
Poet's bearded face looks in at the open window, 
and he asks, **Did you see that inscription on the 
Carnegie Library down at Oakland? Over the 
doorway are carved three words, 'Poetry, Lit- 
erature, Prose.' 

" That is a personal biff — I told 'em so. I said, * You 
fellows should have put it this way : Poetry, Prose, 
Rot, Tommyrot; and inside you should have 
carved these words: Oratory, Gab, Guff, Talk, 
Buzz, Harangue, Palaver, with the name of some 
good man who has a talent for each.' " 
The nearest cottage to the one occupied by the 
Poet belongs to his mother, a Quaker-like old 
dame, ninety years young, who fully realizes that 
she is part of the Exhibit. 

There was a whispered conference between 
Mother and Son, and then the old lady asked: 
"Which one is it, did you say, that writes the 
* Little Journeys ' ? " 

15 



JOAQUIN I saw I was being pointed out, and so I modestly 
MILLER scrutinized the surrounding landscape, while the 
old lady scrutinized me, walking around me twice. 
Then she sighed and remarked, ** He does n't look 
so very smart to me," and went on solemnly 
with her knitting. Later, we became good friends 
— the old lady and I — although I was conscious 
that I was being compared furtively with the son 
of his mother — much to my disadvantage. 
*' He is greater than Shakespeare," said the old lady 
to me once, confidentially — "only, do you know, 
he is such a fool that he tears up the best things 
he writes, and says he is going to write them 
over, but he never does." 

And then she explained how this son went off to 
the Klondike two years ago, and was now plan- 
ning to go again. " But I Ve set down my foot! I 
found out about it and just put a stop to the 
whole business — the idea!" and the good mother 
sighed in a way that showed she had troubles of 
her own. 

We stood by the stile, saying the final good-bye. 
The old lady had come down, too. ** He tears up 

16 



the best things he writes," she said to me — "now JOAQUIN 

tell him he has no sense!" MILLER 

"And if you should," said the son, "she would 

be the first one to dispute it." 

" Thank heaven, I have n't another son like you ! " 

was the answer, and the boy of three-score dodged 

the old lady's cane, and said, "Don't worry, 

sweetheart, you never will ! " 

We crossed the stile, and followed on down the 

winding pathway that ran through the grove of 

citron and orange trees. Looking up after five 

minutes' walk, we saw the Poet standing on a 

slightly jutting cliff just above, his arm around his 

mother. The old lady leaned over and called 

aloud to me, in a voice touched with falsetto, 

"Don't go to the Klondike — it is a fool idea! " 

ELBERT HUBBARD. 



17 



THE STUDY 



THE STUDY 

JOAQUIN MILLER, the unique, the eccen- 
tric, the sensational, the incomprehensible! 
Yes, and at the same time, the greatest poet 
of all this great America of ours. No other 
writer has caught the lights and shades of the 
West — its trackless deserts, its majestic mountains, 
its gloomy canyons, its valleys, its placid ocean, 
and its rough and ready, generously reckless, 
tenderly sympathetic, early-day pioneers, as he. 
Joaquin was brought up in the midst of it. If not 
bom in it, his childhood was spent in it. The Or- 
egon Trail was his first foot-path, skirmishes with 
Indians his youthful adventures, and the wild chil- 
dren of the untamed West his earliest companions. 
Q And with the eye of the true artist, he has 
painted his pictures faithfully to the land of his 
love. His portraits are true to the life ; his land- 
scapes full of the color that exists ; his seascapes 
soulful of the tenderness, pathos and despair of 
the placid and treacherous Pacific. 
Others have written often and much about 

19 



JOAQUIN Joaquin, sometimes sympathetically, oftener harshly 
MILLER and unkindly. To write truthfully, though, one 
must know. The angle of vision determines the 
sight seen. 

No unknowing and unsympathetic soul can describe 
Joaquin. He is too open, too simple, too complex 
in his very simplicity to be understood by the mcin 
who is always ** looking for something more than 
he sees." No poet was ever more misunderstood and 
no poet was ever really so easy to understand and 
know. Take him as he is ! Read him as he stands. 
Do not seek to interpret his actions ; state them. 
Do not put motives upon doings that are motive- 
less, except that he had to do them. Let him be 
his own interpreter and you will gain a clearer 
knowledge of him. Thus it is I feel I can say to 
Joaquin as Browning said : 

Stand still, true poet that you are ! 

I know you ; let me try and draw you. 

We have spent happy days together — have quar- 
reled and argued, loved and gossiped, trusted and 
respected each other, and know each a little of 
the other. That little I seek to present. 

20 



I once received a cordial invitation from Joaquin JOAQUIN 
to spend Christmas day w^ith him. I went early in MILLER 
order that I might enjoy the full day, and, as is my 
wont, took my camera with me, hoping for oppor- 
tunities to make a few interesting pictures. It was 
a beautiful morning and as I left the electric cars 
in the valley and started to walk up the hillside 
road to the Hights, all nature seemed to respond 
to the joyous and healthy emotions of my own 
soul. With my heavy camera swung over my 
shoulder, I trudged along, now and again turning 
back to enjoy the glorious valley view, with the 
smooth expanse of hills surrounding the bay, and 
the glow of the morning sun on the far-reaching 
ocean. The winter rains had clothed the hillsides 
and valley in their most perfect robes. Everything 
was fresh, clean and sweet-scented, and the birds 
reveled in the delight of it all as much as I did. 
They twittered and chirped and called one to 
another and sang their loudest, best and sweetest 
in very fullness of joy. In one place, I saw a flock 
of blackbirds dabble in little pools left by the 
rain, chattering the while with a force zuid 

21 



JOAQUIN volubility that suggested that each was trying to 

MILLER drown the voice of the other. 

On my arrival at the Hights, I found Joaquin's 

plantation in full bloom. He has an Oriental's 

fondness for flowers, and his garden, at this time, 

showed evidence of great care and love expended 

upon it. Joaquin's open door invited me to enter, 

but as I stood upon the upper step, I got a glimpse 

of the poet hard at work writing, in bed — his 

usual working place. Before I had time to greet 

him, his cheery salute burst forth : " What do you 

mean by coming and bothering me at this early 

hour in the morning ? The desire to write seizes 

me seldom enough, and when it does, I don't want 

to be bothered by any one coming to see me. 

Go take a walk!" 

Now many people would have been offended at 

a salutation like this, but I knew Joaquin too well 

to be such a fool. He simply meant what he said 

and no more. His whole nature was absorbed in 

giving expression to some thought that interested 

him, and I came as a disturbing presence. He did 

not want me and said so emphatically ; therefore, 

22 



without a word, I withdrew to enjoy the delights JOAQUIN 
of the garden. MILLER 

Why will people insist upon it that candor is 
offensive and insulting ? I was Joaquin's friend ; 
he was mine. What friendship would there have 
been in my disturbing him at his work when I had 
all day to wait, and what faith would he have 
shown in my friendship, if, fearful of offending, 
he had allowed me to interrupt his work? That, 
to me, would have been an insult and an 
offence. To feel that my friend knew and under- 
stood me so little as to deem me capable of put- 
ting my paltry dignity before his comfort and the 
accomplishment of what might be work of im- 
portance to the world ! For aught I know, he may 
have been writing at that very moment the poem 
that to my mind is the most powerful yet written 
in the English tongue — "Columbus" — and my 
unexpected appearance might have disturbed or 
jarred the fine equilibrium of mind and nervous 
system which enabled him to put into such pure, 
virile English, the grand and important lesson 
taught to the New World by this great discoverer. 

23 



JOAQUIN Suppose such a case — and it does not seem to me 
MILLER an unreasonable supposition — could I have for- 
given myself had such a thing occurred ? So now, 
as then, I am thankful to Joaquin for his honest 
candor. 

Yet, warring with this sentiment in Joaquin's 
mind, was his tardy recognition of the duties of 
hospitality. Little by little there sifted into his 
preoccupied brain the thought that, perhaps, he 
had been discourteous to me. The moment he saw 
this, wdth an intenseness, fervor, and simplicity, as 
of a little child, he jumped out of bed, regardless 
of the fact that he wore nothing but his pajamas, 
rushed into the garden, rapidly and silently picked 
a most beautiful bouquet, and then, stalking up to 
me where I sat eyeing him with unaffected amuse- 
ment, he said, ** If you can read what the flowers 
say, you will see that I am sorry for not having 
greeted you more hospitably this morning. I love 
you and am glad to see you, but I am very busy 
and want to work out what I have in mind. Ex- 
cuse me for a little while." During this speech, 
that calm, blue eye of his looked at me with a 

24 



tremulous intenseness of simple trust and affection JOAQUIN 
that brought tears into my eyes, and I thought MILLER 
then, as I have thought many times since, how 
little people understand this great, big, simple- 
hearted, bewhiskered boy. There was no more 
thought of effect in this action than there is in the 
simplest doings of a child. He had yielded to the 
generous impulse that struck him, without any 
more thought of incongruity or ludicrousness than 
that displayed by a little child who rushes into a 
crowded reception room, in its night-dress, to 
kiss papa and mamma good-night! 
As I sat there, however, cogitating over this in- 
teresting instance, somewhat in the fashion I have 
just written down, a new thought struck me. It 
was this: Though Joaquin does much of his 
writing in bed, I have never seen a photograph 
showing him at work. Now is the time to get one. 
Q, Carefully I set up my camera, got everything 
ready, and then calmly, and as silently as I could, 
stole up the steps into his room. In a moment his 
ire was aroused. With gruff impatience he called 
out: "What are you doing?" Deliberately 

25 



JOAQUIN proceeding to focus on him, I replied: "It is not 
MILLER often the divine afflatus seizes me with the desire 
to make a photograph of a man at work in bed. 
When it does, I do not want any measly old poet 
to interfere with my work. You have your work 
to do, and I have mine." A merry twinkle came 
into his eyes, and then he laughed outright. 
"Well, what do you want, anyway?" 
" All I want is that you will go right on with 
your work, just as you are, until I ask you to stop. 
Then I want you to hold still and look pleasant 
for a little while, until I tell you to resume your 
natural expression." 

He did exactly as I asked him, and the result was 
I secured two of as fine negatives as I ever made, 
showing the poet engaged in writing, in his favor- 
ite attitude. 

It may strike some people as strange that he 
should desire to write in bed, and yet it is per- 
fectly simple and natural. There is a freedom 2md 
ease of body when one is in bed, that, to many, 
is conducive to an easy flow of thought. I have 
often experienced it myself. The attitude of repose, 

26 



with eyes closed, is productive of mental activity. JOAQUIN 
It is little trouble to sit up, w^rite out the idea, MILLER 
and then lie down again until more thoughts come. 
It is only when the writing mood is upon him 
that Joaquin is thus a *' stayer in bed." He is 
usually very active and fond of outdoor exercise. 
Q I once expressed to Joaquin a desire to meet 
Col. John P. Irish, who was then editor of one 
of the leading San Francisco dailies. One night 
Joaquin came over to Oakland to deliver a lec- 
ture, and, of course, I attended. Unfortunately, 
some pressing duties detained me and I arrived at 
the lecture hall after he had begun to speak. The 
room was well filled. It must have been a lodge 
room, for at each end and on each side there were 
small, raised platforms, on which were seats cov- 
ered with canopies, such as are used for officers 
of secret organizations. Desirous of giving me a 
good seat, the usher took me to the raised plat- 
form on the side, at the right of Joaquin. My 
entrance naturally disturbed the speaker, and, 
seeing who it was, and noticing that Col. Irish sat 
immediately in front of him, the thought doubtless 

27 



JOAQUIN flashed through Joaquin's mind that here was a 
MILLER good opportunity to make the promised intro- 
duction. Accordingly, without any apology to 
his audience, he stepped from the stand upon 
which he was speaking, took CoL Irish by the 
hand and led him to where I sat, exclaiming, 
"James, Irish! Irish, James!" And then walked 
back and resumed his speech. To say the audi- 
ence was amazed, is but to express it mildly ; 
while Irish and I stood quietly laughing at each 
other, at the audience, and at Joaquin's consum- 
mate imperturbability. 

Lady Constance Rothschild, the wife of Mr. 
Cyril Flower, Member of Parliament for Luton, 
well known for the brilliancy of her receptions, as 
well as their broad and bohemian character, once 
told me of a reception she arranged for the pur- 
pose of bringing Joaquin and Mrs. Langtry to- 
gether. The latter was then at the height of her 
fame. On the evening of the reception, Joaquin 
came early, and, to Mrs. Flower's amazement, 
presented himself in a red flannel shirt, a pair of 
blue denim overalls, tucked into tall, miners' 

28 



boots, and wearing a very high-crowned broad- JOAQUIN 
brimmed sombrero, which he failed to remove in MILLER 
her presence. 

" You do not mind my appearing in this rig, do 
you. Lady Constance?" inquired Joaquin. **I 
want to meet Mrs. Langtry as a representative of 
the miners of California.*' 
"Certainly not," replied Mrs. Flower, "whatever 
is agreeable to you is eminently satisfactory tome." 
Q As the other guests arrived, one by one, and 
saw this strangely grotesque figure, chatting with 
perfect ease and sang froid with the most beauti- 
ful belles of London, and the brainiest men in 
England, they wondered what new freak Mrs. 
Flower had provided for them. They were not 
left long to question. When Mrs. Langtry ap- 
peared, robed with the perfection of taste that 
has helped make her name world-famed, Joaquin 
advanced to meet her, led by Mrs. Flower. As 
the introduction took place, Joaquin seemed not to 
notice the proffered hand of Mrs. Langtry, but, 
rapidly raising both hands to his sombrero, took 
hold of it and dexterously showered upon the 

29 



JOAQUIN astonished lady a wealth of beautiful rose leaves, 
MILLER at the same time jerking out in his most jerky 
fashion, **The tribute of the California roses to 
the Jersey Lily." 

"Where do you live, Joaquin?" I once asked 
him. 

"Three miles east, one mile perpendicular! " was 
the reply. 

Geographically speaking, that place is "the 
Hights," near Oakland, California, and is Joaquin 
Miller's home. 

That expression, "Three miles east and one mile 
perpendicular," is a graphic, symbolic statement 
of Joaquin's mental habitat. He lives miles nearer 
to the rising sun than most people, and his normal 
dwelling place is "a mile perpendicular." His 
nest is on " the Hights" ; his eye far-seeing, blue, 
prophetic, keen, kind ; and his soul attuned, when 
he sings, to the harmony of the spheres. 
With narrowness, and conceit born of its narrow- 
ness, the East has never thought Joaquin Miller 
as great a poet as its Longfellow, its Bryant, its 
Whittier, its Emerson, its Poe. But Eastern 

30 



standards are not alone American standards. Be JOAQUIN 
it for good or for evil, America, in literature, no MILLER 
longer means New England, any more than 
America is New England. The American poet 
must be more than local. 

America is not confined to New England. It is a 
vast continent. To be an American poet, one must 
know more than New England, more than the 
North, more than the South, more than the Mid- 
dle West, even more than Chicago and St. Louis. 
He must know those towering and far-reaching 
Rockies, in one fold of which all the mountains of 
the East and South could softly nestle and hide. 
He must know the Pacific as well as the Atlantic ; 
the mysteries, honors, joys and agonies of the 
painted desert ; the bottomless but colorful abysses 
of the Grand Canyon; the wild, beauteous rug- 
gedness of the Yosemite; the bubbling hell-pools 
of the Yellowstone ; the solitude and snowy vast- 
nesses of Alaska, and indeed, all the many and va- 
ried physiographic features that distinguish our new 
and Titanic West from our great but older East. 
Q More ! he must be familiar with the child heart 

31 



JOAQUIN of the human race as well as that of the highly 
MILLER cultured. Longfellow wrote beautifully of the 
Indian, but it was a white man, a civilized mind 
expounding the theme, hence it was not Indian. 
Joaquin lived v^th Indians; became an Indian. 
There is a vast difference between becoming like 
an Indian and really transforming into one. Few 
white men ever become Indians. Joaquin did. He 
began early enough — the only time one can begin. 
Allured by the mysticism that surrounded the 
strangely clad, often unclad, rough-looking, dark- 
eyed natives, he followed them to their camps and 
climbed with them to snowy mountain heights and 
rocky canyon depths. He loved them, and they loved 
him in return. Then they taught him the woodcraft 
of a thousand years, and showed him how to read 
the heavens, the earth, and the waters that are 
under the earth, as none but Indians can. He 
journeyed with them on foot, on horseback, and 
in canoe. He sat with them by their camp-fires 
and learned, as children learn from their mothers, 
how they think, how they imagine, how they 

create. He listened as they told their strange, 

32 




simple and poetic conceptions as to how the world JOAQUIN 
and all its powers originated. His poetic imagina- MILLER 
tion was fired by their child-like, but exquisitely 
beautiful stories, legends and myths. He saw the 
mountains, valleys, forests, plains, canyons, deserts, 
ocean and islands in their creation, as the Indian 
poets saw them, and he entered into a new life 
when these necromancers of the imagination pic- 
tured for him the "days of old," when reptiles, 
fishes, birds and beasts walked and talked with 
men. 

During all this time, he lived as an Indian, out 
of doors, free, unconfined, wild, untamed, unciv- 
ilized as the birds, the trees, the clouds, the stars. 
Q Then, in the days of his young manhood, he 
went back to civilization. He taught himself re- 
straint, control, subjugation of his will to others. 
In these days he passed through many and varied 
experiences, now adding knowledge both of books 
and men to his accumulated store of Indian and 
Nature lore. Yet his life still gave him that daily 
contact with the new and larger West of which 
he was to become pre-eminently the poet. He 

33 



JOAQUIN studied law and was admitted to practice at the 
MILLER bar; he went to the gold mines and experienced 
all its strange and novel life — doing his own cook- 
ing, caring for sick comrades, washing his own 
clothes, laboring with his hands in the eager 
search for the yellow metal, now facing a drunken 
desperado, and next passing the hat for an itiner- 
ant preacher. During this gold excitement, there 
was a time when the miners were shut in and 
could get no mail. Deep snows, fifteen feet and 
more, had frightened the mail carrier, and these 
hundreds of men longed for news from wives, 
daughters, sons, at home. Joaquin Miller was the 
one man of the camp who volunteered to brave 
the storms, dare the dangers, defy the perils, and 
stand off the hungry wolves, as he crossed the 
snow-clad mountains, swept by angry winds, 
where no trail led his footsteps and all the ordi- 
nary identification marks were invisible ; slid and 
slipped down the steep canyon slopes and forded 
or ** logged " the swift-running mountain streams, 
simply to bring messages of love to the lonely 
men. It was on that trip that he suffered the 

34 



untold agonies of snow-blindness — agony that was JOAQUIN 
not merely temporary, but that affected his eye- MILLER 
sight so that he suffers from the ill effects to this 
day. Soon he organized a pony express connect- 
ing California, Idaho and Montana, and himself 
rode against time, hostile Indians, and bandit 
whites. Day or night, light, starlight or pitch dark, 
the mad race of the pony express continued. Who 
can tell what the world owes to the pictures that 
flashed into the brain of the rising American poet 
as he dashed through the air in this exciting and 
dangerous occupation. 

Before and during the war, he edited a paper, 
and, as a Quaker should, he spoke in the interests 
of peace. Not being a politician, he saw things 
from the abstractly right view-point and said and 
wrote things that in those heated days were re- 
garded as treasonable ; so his paper was suppressed 
and he was practically ostracised. 
Again he fled to the gold mines, and there had 
an experience with a brave band of pioneers who 
went out to put down an uprising of the savage 
Indians of the Lava Beds, in Northern California. 

35 



JOAQUIN Q On his return, he was elected to the bench and 
MILLER served a term, devoting all his spare time to writing 
some of the thoughts that flooded his brain. His 
published poems brought him nothing but disdain, 
however, and defeat in the next convention, where 
he asked for higher honors. It was a bitter disap- 
pointment, yet, like so many similar experiences, 
it was a blessing in disguise. It sent him off to 
Europe, where he came in contact with the larger 
world of science, art and letters. He saw the civ- 
ilizations of the old world and learned at first hand, 
with his novel experiences as a background, the 
lessons of the past. 

Then followed years of travel and varied vicissi- 
tudes here, there and everywhere. Brought into 
contact with the highest and the best, he learned 
fully to appreciate what they valued in his art. 
Q Hence a peculiar fitness for the work that des- 
tiny had prepared for him. He came to look upon 
this great America of his as no other poet of the 
age could. His survey was from a higher eleva- 
tion, was immeasurably more comprehensive, and 
far more understanding than that of ciny of his 

36 



compeers. He saw with the eyes of culture, edu- JOAQUIN 
cation and refinement the Eastern and Old World MILLER 
civilization, and, to my mind, more important still, 
as an equipment for our poet, he saw with the 
eyes of childhood of the race, eyes that accepted 
the mysteries of Life and Nature as babes accept 
them, without a thought, a question or a fear. 
Q Hence his work is conventional, and yet as 
wildly free as the song of the bird. His verse is 
in line, yet it is not the line of the ruler, but of the 
gigantic Sequoia. His poems are sculptured mar- 
ble, but they are like El Capitan and the Grand 
Canyon, sculptured by wind, frost, rain, storm 
and atmospheric gases. 

As a Nature singer, no American poet is the 
equal of Joaquin Miller. None could have been 
unless he had had Joaquin's experience and knew 
what he knew. 

There is nothing derogatory in recognizing the 
limitations of Longfellow, Lowell and others of 
our poets. They did not see, did not know this 
larger, greater America, and therefore exercised 
their energies in other directions. Had Fremont 

37 



JOAQUIN been a poet, he might have stood side by side 
MILLER with Joaquin Miller and challenged his right to the 
elevated position I claim for him : for he knew — 
he was a mountain climber, a forder of unknown 
streams, a pathfinder over trackless prairies and 
a maker of trails over pathless deserts. Lewis and 
Clark knew enough, perhaps, had they had the 
poetic fire, to have been great American poets : 
for they wandered over the untamed vastness of 
the West in the early days of the white man's 
occupancy of the continent. 
But men who never crossed the Missouri River, 
much less those who never reached half-way to 
it from the East — were incapable of being the 
poets of all America. They did not know Amer- 
ica in its fullness, hence their harps were not 
strung to all its sweet melodies and entrancing 
harmonies. 

Nay! the simile is incomplete, unsatisfactory. To 
stretch the musical metaphor and compel it, against 
its limitations, to obey my thought, the theme, 
"America," is one which requires orchestral 
handling. String, wood, reed, brass, pipe and pig 

38 



skin, with occasional cymbals and bells, are needed. JOAQUIN 
The mere flute player, play he never so ravish- MILLER 
ingly, cannot satisfy the ear's demand for brazen 
music ; neither can the divine playing of a Paga- 
nini on the strings compensate for the absence of 
trombone, oboe, clarinet and French horn. 
Our great poets, as Bryant, Longfellow, Lowell, 
Emerson, Holmes, were admirable soloists, or 
perhaps capable of producing delicious strains 
from more than one instrument, but Joaquin Mil- 
ler is the controlling power of a great orchestra, 
upon every instrument of which he plays with 
skill and passion. He has scaled the heights, dared 
the depths of the wonderful gamut of a full, com- 
plete, whole America. His work gives ravishing 
melodies and entrancing harmonies, comprising 
all the elements of choicest music in masterly ar- 
rangement. 

Read in the following selections his invitation to 
his daughter to come to his newly established 
home on "the Hights," above Oakland, and see 
how, in that one song, longing, tenderness, sweet- 
ness, pathos, strength, ruggedness, and love are 

39 



JOAQUIN combined. Q He saw and described beauty in 
MILLER every form. Read his "Alaska," ** Yosemite,'* 
"The Ship in the Desert," and "Where Rolls 
the Oregon," and then run through his poems as 
a whole and pick out a thousand dainty and ex- 
quisite little bits, such as these : 

She was damn*d with the dower of beauty, she 
Had gold in shower by shoulder and brow. 
Her feet! — why, her two blessed feet were so small, 
They could nest in this hand. How queenly, how tall, 
How gracious, how grand ! 
Or this introduction to his " Arizonian": 
Come to my sunland! Come with me 
To the land I love ; where the sun and sea 
Are wed for ever; where the palm and pine 
Are fiird with singers; where tree and vine 
Are voiced with prophets ! O come, and you 
Shall sing a song with the seas that swirl 
And kiss their hands to that cold white girl, 
To the maiden moon in her mantle of blue. 

Even Browning's "Dawn" is not more vivid than 

these two lines: 

And the pale moon rubs on her purple cover 
Till worn as thin and as bright as tin. 

Like Browning, he has many notes of true fun, 

40 



in which you can hear him clap his hands and JOAQUIN 

laugh with very exuberance of glee. Such things MILLER 

are, **In Classic Shades," "The Gentle Man 

from Boston," '* William Brown of Oregon," and 

'* A Turkey Hunt on the Colorado," the anti-climax 

of which is a masterly stroke. 

Listen to the bold roar of the storm in this verse 

from ** At our Golden Gate" : 

Oh, for England's old sea thunder 
Oh, for England's bold sea men. 
When we banged her over, under 
And she banged us back again ! 
Better old time strife and stresses. 
Cloud top't towers, walls, distrust ; 
Better wars than lazinesses, 
Better loot than wine and lust ! 
Give us seas ? Why, we have oceans ! 
Give us manhood, sea men, men ! 
Give us deeds, loves, hates, emotions! 
' Else give back these seas again. 

He has always been an ideal defender of the 
slandered and dishonored. When Joaquin Muri- 
etta, the California bandit, was hounded and fol- 
lowed, captured and cruelly slain, Miller defended 

41 



JOAQUIN him in his poem and thus brought derision, scorn, 

MILLER hatred and contumely upon himself. That hatred 

and scorn was what caused him to change his 

name to Joaquin. He took the hated name and 

defied those who despised him. 

When Walker was dishonored, he wrote his 

"With Walker in Nicaragua," and started out 

with: 

He was a brick : 



For he was true as God*s north star. 
And brave as Yuba's grizzKes are, 
Yet gentle as a panther is, 
Mouthing her young in her first fierce kiss. 

He dedicated his collected poems to the most hated 
and universally disliked man in California: Col- 
lis P. Huntington, president of the Southern 
Pacific, in tribute of his greatness as a builder 
of railways. 

When Riel, the Rebel, was hanged in Canada, he 
wrote three stanzas, that, had they been seen by 
Queen Victoria, would have made her feel as if 
all Arctic's snow and ice were piled upon her 
bosom. 

42 



His "Cuba Libre" was as vivid and powerful JOAQUIN 
an arraignment of Spain as was ever penned, and MILLER 
his "Chants for the Boer" put into burning 
poetry what Herbert Spencer wrote in intense, 
forceful prose. 

For the right that needs assistance 
For the wrong that needs resistance 
For the glory in the distance, 
For the good that we can do, 

was his motto. 

His cry of passion at the suggestion of an alliance 
between England and the United States in the 
Britain-Boer controversy, is like a trumpet-call from 
the fearless Isaiah or daring Elijah. 
And yet, at the outset, he says: "Find here not 
one ill word for brave old England ; my first, best 
friends were English ! " 

To Russia, he has cried with Tolstoyan power 
and warning. Nay, Tolstoy never wrote anything 
as powerful as Joaquin Miller's "To the Czar." 
Q Who shall say he is not a prophet ? Twenty- 
three years ago, he wrote "Cuba Libre": 

She shall rise as rose Columbus 

From his chains, from shame and wrong — 

43 



JOAQUIN Rise as morning, matchless, wondrous — 

MILLER Rise as some rich morning song — 

Rise as ringing song and story. 
Valor, Love personified. 
Stars and Stripes espouse her glory. 
Love and liberty allied. 

Yes, Joaquin has carried many messages to Gar- 
cia. Like Andrew Rowan, who has no intention 
of retiring from business, he is still carrying them. 
Q In one or two instances, he has not hesitated to 
call aloud to arms, as in the ** Chants for the Boer," 
where he bids them welcome England : 

Well, welcome her! 

Give her such welcome with such will 

As Boston gave in battle's whir 

That red, dread day at Bunker Hill. 

His ancestry and home training was that of the 
Friends, and though he has never been a consist- 
ent anything, much less a Friend in the orthodox, 
religious sense, his voice has ever been for peace. 
Q, There are some poets who are larger than 
their message, and who know it; others whose 
message is larger than themselves, and they know 

it ; still others whose message is much larger than 

44 



themselves, and they do not know it. To this JOAQUIN 
latter class Joaquin Miller belongs. He neither MILLER 
knows the measure of his work, nor of himself. 
Nor does the world, as yet, dream of the magni- 
tude and power of his art. He is a prophet who 
sees to the highest hilltops and beyond. 

GEORGE WHARTON JAMES. 



STUDY OF JAMES 

WHEN Napoleon met Wolfgang Goethe 
he said, "At last I have seen a man." 
C^ When George Wharton James 
made a little journey to Sun-up and spoke one 
Sunday afternoon in Roycroft Chapel, I mopped 
for joy and said the same. 

I never saw but one man to compare with James, 
and that was Dr. Lorenz of Vienna. They look 
alike, act alike, are about the same age — each has 
the same splendid health, the good cheer, the 
perfect poise, and the great sympathetic heart of 
a Man. 

45 



JOAQUIN These men know their business, and each, in his 
MILLER own line, has done his work better than any other 
living person. 

James is the one authority on the Art of the 
North American Indian. 
What 's that ! — there is none ? 
Lookee, my friend — no white woman can think 
out with her head and make with her hands a 
work of beauty to compare in completeness, in 
proportion, in perfection of color and design, with 
the work of an Arizona Indian woman. This In- 
dian may work two years on a single basket, and 
into its design she will weave the history of her 
race, and her own history as well — her aspira- 
tions, hopes, disappointments, and her love. 
To do good work you must be a good person. 
A beautiful piece of work is a beautiful thought 
made manifest. 
An Indian basket is a prayer. 
Man, like Deity, creates in his own image. If there 
is no beauty in your soul, there will be no beauty 
in your work. If you have an inward illumination, 
it will come out at your finger-tips in your work, 

46 









i^.!^j^:{^V-: 







, ^^ 'if^ ,rt^ 'i^jmm^' 




ELBERT HUBBARD 



if you are free. Cf And so these Indians who do JOAQUIN 

this perfect work — this work of most exquisite MILLER 

proportion and design — must have in them much 

good. Are they not God's children ? and has He 

not breathed into their spirits somewhat of the 

goodness and glory that reveals itself in leaf and 

flower, in bird and song, in mountain peak and 

sunset glow? 

All is one. 

And when you see George Wharton James and 

hear and listen to him as he relates the story of 

Ramona and her baskets, your heart will go out 

to all humanity in a universal sympathy, and love 

will possess your soul. 

James has lived alone in the mountains and on the 

plains, and for six months has never seen a white 

person. The man who can live alone must be in 

good company in order to enjoy. Is n't that so? 

Q James is a specimen. He can run, ride, swim, 

work and play. He eats like a hired man and 

sleeps like a baby. He has the child-heart, the 

body of a strong man, the mind of a prophet, and 

the soul of a god. 

47 



JOAQUIN That is a combination we would all like to be, 

MILLER and may, if we get ourselves in harmony with the 

Infinite. 

Let 's be men. 

ELBERT HUBBARD. 



48 



THE POEMS 



THE POEMS 

ELECTIONS from Joaquin Miller's "Com- 
plete Poetical Works," published by Whit- 
aker & Ray Company, San Francisco, 
California, to whom sincere thanks are 

tendered for their kind permission to republish 

here. 




ABOVE THE CLOUDS 

'Mid white Sierras, that slope to the sea, 
Lie turbulent lands. Go dwell in the skies, 
And the thundering tongues of Yosemite 
Shall persuade you to silence, and you shall be 
, wise. 

I but sing for the love of song and the few 
Who loved me first and shall love me last ; 
And the storm shall pass as the storms have 

pass'd. 
For never were clouds but the sun came through. 

49 



JOAQUIN KIT CARSON'S RIDE 

MILLER Room ! room to turn round in, to breathe and be free, 
To grow to be giant, to sail as at sea 
With the speed of the wind on a stoed with his mane 
To the wind, without pathway or route or a rein. 
Room! room to be free where the white border'd sea 
Blows a kiss to a brother as boundless as he; 
Where the buffalo come like a cloud on the plain. 
Pouring on like the tide of a storm driven main. 
And the lodge of the hunter to friend or to foe 
Offers rest ; and unquestioned you come or you go. 
My plains of America ! Seas of wild lands ! 
From a land in the seas in a raiment of foam. 
That has reached to a stranger the welcome of home, 
I turn to you, lean to you, lift you my hands. 
London, 1871. 

Run? Run? See this flank, sir, and I do love him 

so! 
But he 's blind as a badger. Whoa, Pache, boy, 

whoa. 
No, you would n*t believe it to look at his eyes. 
But he 's blind, badger blind, and it happened this 

wise: 

50 







•--awnrs. 



PREACHER BEN 



We lay in the grass and the sunburnt clover JOAQUIN 

That spread on the ground like a great brown MILLER 

cover 
Northward and southward, and west and away 
To the Brazos, where our lodges lay, 
One broad and unbroken level of brown. 
We were waiting the curtains of night to come 

down 
To cover us trio and conceal our flight 
With my brown bride, won from an Indian tovm 
That lay in the rear the full ride of a night. 

We lounged in the grass — her eyes were in 

mine, 
And her hands on my knee, and her hair was as 

wine 
In its wealth and its flood, pouring on and all over 
Her bosom wine red, and press'd never by one. 
Her touch was as warm as the tinge of the clover 
Burnt brown as it reach'd to the kiss of the sun. 
Her words they were low as the lute-throated 

dove. 

And as laden with love as the heart when it beats 

51 



JOAQUIN In its hot, eager answer to earliest love, 
MILLER Or the bee hurried home by its burthen of sweets. 

We lay low in the grass on the broad plain levels, 
Old Revels and I, and my stolen brown bride ; 
"Forty full miles if a foot to ride! 
Forty full miles if a foot, and the devils 
Of red Comanches are hot on the track 
When once they strike it. Let the sun go down 
Soon, very soon," muttered bearded old Revels 
As he peer'd at the sun, lying low on his back. 
Holding fast to his Icisso. Then he jerk'd at his 

steed 
And he sprang to his feet, and glanced sv^ftly 

around. 
And then dropp'd, as if shot, with cin ear to the 

ground ; 
Then again to his feet, and to me, to my bride, 
While his eyes were like flame, his face like a 

shroud. 

His form like a king and his beard like a cloud. 

And his voice loud and shrill, as both trumpet and 

reed, — 

52 



"Pull, pull in your lassoes, and bridle to steed, JOAQUIN 
And speed you if ever for life you would speed. MILLER 
Aye, ride for your lives, for your lives you must 

ride! 
For the plain is aflame, the prairie on fire. 
And the feet of w^ild horses hard flying before 
I hear like a sea breaking high on the shore, 
While the buffalo come like a surge of the sea. 
Driven far by the flame, driving fast on us three 
As a hurricane comes, crushing palms in his ire/' 

We drew in the lassoes, seized saddle and rein. 
Threw them on, cinched them on, cinched them 

over again. 
And again drew the girth ; and spring we to horse, 
With head to the Brazos, with a sound in the air 
Like the surge of a sea, with a flash in the eye, 
From that red wall of flame reaching up to the 

sky; 
A red wall of flame and a black rolling sea 
Rushing fsist upon us, as the wind sweeping free 
And afar from the desert blown hollow and 

hoarse. 

53 



JOAQUIN Not a word, not a wail from a lip was let fall, 
MILLER We broke not a whisper, we breathed not a 

prayer. 
There was work to be done, there was death in 

the air. 
And the chance was as one to a thousand for all. 

Twenty miles ! thirty miles ! a dim distant 

speck .... 
Then a long reaching line, and the Brazos in sight ! 
And I rose in my seat with a shout of delight. 
I stood in my stirrup and look'd to my right — 
But Revels was gone; I glanced by my shoulder 
And saw his horse stagger ; I saw his head droop- 
ing 
Hard down on his breast, and his naked breast 

stooping 
Low down to the mane, as so swifter and bolder 
Ran reaching out for us the red-footed fire. 
He rode neck to neck with a buffalo bull. 
That made the earth shake where he came in his 

course, 
The monarch of millions, with shaggy mane full 

54 



Of smoke and of dust, and it shook with desire JOAQUIN 
Of battle, with rage and with bello wings hoarse. MILLER 
His keen, crooked horns, through the storm of his 

mane. 
Like black lances lifted and lifted again ; 
And I looked but this once, for the fire licked 

through, 
And Revels was gone, as we rode two and two. 

I look'd to my left then — and nose, neck, and 

shoulder 
Sank slowly, sank surely, till back to my thighs. 
And up through the black blowing veil of her 

hair 
Did beam full in mine her two marvelous eyes, 
With a longing and love yet a look of despair 
And of pity for me, as she felt the smoke fold her, 
And flames leaping far for her glorious hair. 
Her sinking horse falter'd, plunged, fell and was 

gone 
As I reach'd through the flame and I bore her still on. 
On ! into the Brazos, she, Pache and I — 
Poor, burnt, blinded Pache. I love him.That's why. 

55 



JOAQUIN JUANITA 

MILLER You will come my bird, Bonita? 

Come ! For I by steep and stone 
Have built such nest for you, Juanita, 
As not eagle bird hath known. 

Rugged! Rugged as Parnassus! 
Rude, as all roads I have trod — 
Yet are steeps and stone-strewn passes 
Smooth o'er head, and nearest God. 

Here black thunders of my canyon 
Shake its walls in Titan wars ! 
Here white sea-bom clouds companion 
With such peaks as know the stars ! 

Here madrona, manzanita — 
Here the snarling chaparral 
House and hang o'er steeps, Juanita, 
Where the gaunt wolf loved to dwell ! 

Dear, I took these trackless masses 

Fresh from Him who fashioned them ; 

Wrought in rock, and hewed fair passes, 

Flower set, as sets a gem. 

56 



Aye, I built in woe. God willed it ; JOAQUIN 

Woe that passeth ghosts of guilt ; MILLER 

Yet I built as His birds builded — 
Builded, singing as I built. 

All is finished ! Roads of flowers 
Wait your loyal little feet. 
All completed ? Nay, the hours 
Till you come are incomplete. 

Steep below me lies the valley, 
Deep below me lies the town. 
Where great sea-ships ride and rally. 
And the world walks up cind down. 

O, the sea of lights far streaming 
When the thousand flags are furled — 
When the gleaming bay lies dreaming 
As it duplicates the world ! 

You will come my dearest, truest ? 

Come my sovereign queen of ten ; 

My blue skies will then be bluest; 

My white rose be whitest then : 

57 



JOAQUIN Then the song! Ah, then the saber 

MILLER Flashing up the walls of night ! 

Hate of wrong and love of neighbor — 
Rhymes of battle for the Right ! 

YOSEMITE 

Sound! sound! sound! 

O colossal walls and crown'd 

In one eternal thunder! 

Sound! sound! sound! 

O ye oceans overhead, 

While we walk, subdued in wonder, 

In the ferns and grasses, under 

And beside the swift Merced ! 

Fret! fret! fret! 

Streaming, sounding banners, set 
On the giant granite castles 
In the clouds and in the snow! 
But the foe he comes not yet, — 
We are loyal, valiant vassals. 
And we touch the trailing tassels 
Of the banners far below. 

58 



Surge ! surge ! surge ! JOAQUIN 

From the white Sierra's verge, MILLER 

To the very valley blossom. 

Surge! surge! surge! 

Yet the song-bird builds a home. 

And the mossy branches cross them. 

And the tasselled tree-tops toss them, 

In the clouds of falling foam. 

Sweep! sweep! sweep! 
O ye heaven-bom and deep. 
In one dread, unbroken chorus I 
We may wonder or may weep, — 
We may wait on God before us ; 
We may shout or lift a hand, — 
We may bow down and deplore us. 
But may never understand. 

Beat! beat! beat! 
We advance, but would retreat 
From this restless, broken breast 
Of the earth in a convulsion. 
We would rest, but dare not rest, 

59 



JOAQUIN For the angel of expulsion 

MILLER From this Paradise below 

Waves us onward and we go. 

ALASKA 

Ice built, ice bound and ice bounded, 

Such cold seas of silence ! such room ! 

Such snow-light, such sea-light confounded 

With thunders that smite like a doom ! 

Such grandeur! such glory! such gloom! 

Hear that boom ! Hear that deep distant boom 

Of an avalanche hurled 

Down this unfinished world ! 

Ice seas ! and ice summits ! ice spaces 

In splendor of white, as God's throne ! 

Ice worlds to the pole ! and ice places 

Untracked and unnamed, and unknown! 

Hear that boom ! Hear the grinding, the 

groan 

Of the ice-gods in pain! Hear the moan 

Of yon ice mountain hurled 

Down this unfinished world. 

60 



PETER COOPER JOAQUIN 

Died 1883 MILLER 



Give honor and love forevermore 
To this great man gone to rest ; 
Peace on the dim Plutonian shore, 
Rest in the land of the blest! 

I reckon him greater than any man 
That ever drew sword in war ; 
I reckon him nobler than king or khan, 
Braver and better by far. 

And wisest he in this whole wide land 
Of hoarding till bent and gray ; 
For all you can hold in your cold dead hand 
Is what you have given away. 

So whether to wander the stars or to rest 

Forever hushed and dumb, 

He gave with a zest and he gave his best — 

Give him the best to come. 

61 



JOAQUIN THE DEAD MILLIONAIRE 

MILLER The gold that with the sunlight lies 
In bursting heaps at dawn, 
The silver spilling from the skies 
At night to walk upon, 
The diamonds gleaming in the dew 
He never saw, he never knew. 

He got some gold, dug from the mud. 

Some silver, crushed from stones. 

The gold was red with dead men's blood, 

The silver black with groans ; 

And when he died he moaned aloud, 

"There '11 be no pocket in my shroud." 

TO THE JERSEY LILY 

If all God's world a garden were. 

And women were but flowers. 

If men were bees that busied there, 

Through endless summer hours, 

O I would hum God's garden through 

For honey till I came to you. 

62 



TO THE CZAR JOAQUIN 

Down from her high estate she stept, MILLER 

A maiden, gently bom, 
And by the icy Volga kept 
Sad watch and waited mom ; 
And peasants say that where she slept 
The new moon dipt her hom. 
Yet on and on, through shoreless snows, 
Far tow'rd the bleak north pole, 
The foulest wrong the good God knows 
Rolled as dark rivers roll ; 
While never once for all their woes 
Upspake your ruthless soul. 

She toiled, she taught the peasant, taught 
The dark-eyed Tartar. He, 
Illumined with her lofty thought. 
Rose up and sought to be. 
What God at the creation wrought, 
A man ! God-like and free. 
Yet still before him yawned the black 
Siberian mines! And oh. 
The knout upon the bare white back ! 

63 



JOAQUIN The blood upon the snow! 
MILLER The gaunt wolves, close upon the track, 
Fought o'er the fallen so ! 

And this that one might wear a crown 

Snatched from a strangled sire ! 

And this that two might mock or frown, 

From high thrones climbing higher — 

From where the Parricide looked down 

With harlot in desire ! 

Yet on, beneath the great north star, 

Like some lost, living thing. 

That long dread line stretched, black and far 

Till buried by death's wing ! 

And great men praised the goodly Czar — 

But God sat pitying. 

****** 

A storm burst forth ! From out the storm 
The clean, red lightning leapt. 

And lo, a prostrate royal form 

And Alexander slept ! 
Down through the snow, all smoking, warm 

64 



Like any blood, his crept. JOAQUIN 

Yea, one lay dead, for millions dead! MILLER 

One red spot in the snow 

For one long damning line of red, 

Where exiles endless go — 

The babe at breast, the mother's head 

Bowed down, and dying so. 

And did a woman do this deed? 

Then build her scaffold high, 

That all may on her forehead read 

The martyr's right to die! 

Ring Cossack round on royal steed! 

Now lift her to the sky ! 

But see ! From out the black hood shines 

A light few look upon ! 

Lorn exiles, see, from dark, deep mines, 

A star at burst of dawn ! 

A thud! A creak of hangman's lines! — 
A frail shape jerked and drawn ! . . . . 

'i' ^ •4* •!* •!• •£• 

•r» •!• ^ •!• <|S <!> 

The Czar is dead; the woman dead, 

65 



JOAQUIN About her neck a cord. 
MILLER In God's house rests his royal head — 
Hers in a place abhorred ; 
Yet I had rather have her bed 
Than thine, most royal lord ! 
Aye, rather be that woman dead, 
Than thee, dead-living Czar, 
To hide in dread, writh both hands red, 

Behind great bolt and bar 

You may control to the North Pole, 
But God still guides the star. 

THE PASSING OF TENNYSON 

My kingly kinsmen, kings of thought, 
I hear your gathered symphonies, 

Such nights as when the world is not, 
And great stars chorus through my trees. 

We knew it, as God's prophets knew; 
We knew it, as mute red men know, 
When Mars leapt searching heaven through 
With flaming torch, that he must go. 
Then Browning, he who knew the stars. 
Stood forth and faced insatiate Mars. 

66 



Then up from Cambridge rose and turned JOAQUIN 

Sweet Lowell from his Druid trees — MILLER 

Turned where the great star blazed and burned, 

As if his own soul might appease. 

Yet on and on through all the stars 

Still searched and searched insatiate Mars. 

Then stanch Walt Whitman saw and knew ; 
Forgetful of his ** Leaves of Grass," 
He heard his ''Drum Taps," and God drew 
His great soul through the shining pass, 
Made light, made bright by burnished stars ; 
Made scintillant from flaming Mars. 

Then soft-voiced Whittier was heard 

To cease ; was heard to sing no more. 

As you have heard some sweetest bird 

The more because its song is o'er. 

Yet brighter up the street of stars 

Still blazed sind burned smd beckoned Mars : 

And then the king came ; king of thought, 

67 



JOAQUIN King David with his harp and crown 

MILLER How wisely well the gods had wrought 
That these had gone and sat them down 
To wait and welcome mid the stars 
All silent in the light of Mars. 

All silent .... So, he lies in state .... 

Our redwoods drip and drip with rain 

Against our rock-lined Golden Gate 
We hear the great, sad, sobbing main. 

But silent all He passed the stars 

That year the whole world turned to Mars. 

COLUMBUS 

I Behind him lay the gray Azores, 

Behind the Gates of Hercules ; 

Before him not the ghost of shores ; 

Before him only shoreless seas. 

The good mate said : " Now must we pray, 

For lo ! the very stars are gone. 

Brave Adm'r'l, speak; what shall I say?" 

" Why, say : * Sail on ! sail on ! and on ! ' " 

68 



** My men grow mutinous day by day ; JOAQUIN 

My men grow ghastly wan and weak." MILLER 

The stout mate thought of home ; a spray 
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. 
** What shall I say, brave Adm'r'l, say, 
If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" 
** Why, you shall say at break of day: 
* Sail on ! sail on ! sail on ! and on ! 



♦ »» 



They sailed and sailed as winds might blow, 
Until at last the blanched mate said : 
"Why, now not even God would know 
Should I and all my men fall dead. 
These very winds forget their way. 
For God from these dread seas is gone. 
Now speak, brave Adm'r'l ; speak and say — " 
He said : ** Sail on ! sail on ! and on ! " 

They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the 

mate : 
"This mad sea shows his teeth to-night. 
He curls his lip, he lies in waut, 
With lifted teeth, as if to bite! ^\ 

69 



JOAQUIN Brave Adm'r'l, say but one good word: 

MILLER What shall we do when hope is gone?" 

The words leapt like a flaming sword : j 
" Sail on ! sail on ! sail on ! and on ! " ^ 

THE IDEAL AND THE REAL 
And full these truths eternal 
O'er the yearning spirit steal, 
That the real is the ideal, 
And the ideal is the real. 

She was damn'd with the dower of beauty, she 
Had gold in shower by shoulder and brow. 
Her feet ! — why, her two blessed feet, were so small, 
They could nest in this hand. Howqueenly, how tall. 
How gracious, how grand ! She was all to me, — 
My present, my past, my eternity ! 

She but lives in my dreams. I behold her now 
By shoreless white waters that flow'd like a sea 
At her feet where I sat ; her lips push'd out 
In brave, warm welcome of dimple and pout ! 
'T was aeons agone. By that river that ran 
All fathomless, echoless, limitless, on. 

70 





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And shoreless, and peopled with never a man, JOAQUIN 

We met, soul to soul No land; yet I think MILLER 

There were willows and lilies that lean'd to drink. 
The stars they were seaFd and the moons were 

gone. 
The wide shining circles that girdled that world, 
They were distant and dim. And an incense curl'd 
In vapory folds from that river that ran 
All shoreless, with never the presence of man. 

How sensuous the night ; how soft was the sound 
Of her voice on the night ! How warm was her 

breath 
In that world that had never yet tasted of death 
Or forbidden sweet fruit ! .... In that far profound 

We were camped on the edges of god-land. We 
Were the people of Saturn. The watery fields, 
The wide-wing'd, dolorous birds of the sea. 
They acknowledged but us. Our brave battle 

shields 
Were my naked white palms ; our food it was love. 
Our roof was the fresco of gold belts above. 

71 



JOAQUIN How tum'd she to me where that wide river ran, 
MILLER With its Hlies and willows and watery reeds, 

And heeded as only your true love heeds ! 

How tender she was, and how timid she was ! 
But a black, hoofed beast, with the head of a 

man. 
Stole down where she sat at my side, and began 
To puff his tan cheeks, then to play, then to pause, 
With his double-reed pipes; then to play and to 

play 
As never played man since the world began, 
And never shall play till the judgment day. 

How he puff 'd I how he play'd! Then down the 

dim shore. 
This half-devil man, all hairy and black. 
Did dance with his hoofs in the sand, laughing 

back 

As his song died away She turned never more 

Unto me after that. She rose, and she pass'd 
Right on from my sight. Then I followed as fast 
As true love can follow. But ever before 
Like a spirit she fled. How vain and how far 

72 



Did I follow my beauty, red belt or white star! JOAQUIN 
Through foamy white sea, unto fruit laden shore ! MILLER 

How long I did follow! My pent soul of fire 
It did feed on itself. I fasted, I cried ; 
Was tempted by many. Yet still I denied 
The touch of all things, and kept my desire .... 
I stood by the lion of St. Mark in that hour 
Of Venice when gold of the sunset is roll'd 
From cloud to cathedral, from turret to tower, 
In matchless, magnificent garments of gold ; 
Then I knew she was near ; yet I had not known 
Her form or her face since the stars were sown. 

We two had been parted — God pity us ! — when 
This world was unnamed and all heaven was dim ; 
We two had been parted far back on the rim 
And the outermost border of heaven's red bars ; 
We two had been parted ere the meeting of 

men. 
Or God had set compass on spaces as yet; 
We two had been parted ere God had once set 
His finger to spinning the purple with stars, — 

73 



JOAQUIN And now at the last in the sea and fret 
MILLER Of the sun of Venice, we two had met. 

Where the lion of Venice, with brows a-frown, 
With tossed mane tumbled, and teeth in air, 
Looks out in his watch o'er the watery town, 
With paw half lifted, with claws half bare. 
By the blue Adriatic, at her bath in the sea, — 
I saw her. I knew her, but she knew not me. 
I had found her at last ! Why I, I had sail'd 
The antipodes through, had sought, and had hailM 
All flags ; I had climbed where the storm clouds 

curl'd. 
And caird o'er the awful arch'd dome of the 

world. 

I saw her one moment, then fell back abash'd. 
And fill'd to the throat .... Then I turn'd me once 

more. 
Thanking God in my soul, while the level sun 

flashed 
Happy halos about her Her breast ! — ^why, her 

breast 

74 






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Was white as twin pillows that lure you to rest. JOAQUIN 
Her sloping limbs moved like to melodies told, MILLER 
As she rose from the sea, and threw back the ' 

gold 

Of her glorious hair, and set face to the shore 

I knew her ! I knew her, though we had not met 
Since the red stars sang to the sun's first set ! 

How long I had sought her ! I had hungered, nor 

ate 
Of any sweet fruits. I had followed not one 
Of all the fair glories grown under the sun. 
I had sought only her, believing that she 
Had come upon earth, and stood waiting for me 
Somewhere by my way. But the pathways of Fate 
They had led otherwhere ; the round world round. 
The far North seas and the near profound 
Had fail'd me for aye. Now I stood by that sea 
Where she bathed in her beauty, God, I and 

she! 



I spake not, but caught in my breath; I did raise 
My face to fair heaven to give God praise 

75 



JOAQUIN That at last, ere the ending of Time, we had met, 
MILLER Had touch'd upon earth at the same sweet 

place .... 
Yea, we never had met since creation at all ; 
Never, since ages ere Adam's fall. 
Had we two met in that hunger and fret 
Where two should be one, but had wander'd 

through space ; 
Through space and through spheres, as some bird 

that hard fate 
Gives a thousand glad Springs but never one 

mate. 

Was it well with my love? Was she true? Was 

she brave 
With virtue's own valor ? Was she waiting for me ? 
Oh, how fared my love ? Had she home ? Had 

she bread? 
Had she known but the touch of the warm- 

temper'd wave? 
Was she bom to this world with a crown on her 

head. 
Or born, like myself, but a dreamer instead ? . . . . 

76 



So long it had been! So long! Why, the sea — JOAQUIN 
That wrinkled and surly, old, time-temper'd MILLER 

slave — 
Had been bom, had his revels, grown wrinkled 

and hoar 
Since I last saw my love on that uttermost shore. 

Oh, how fared my love ? Once I lifted my face. 
And I shook back my hair and look'd out on the 

sea; 
I press'd my hot palms as I stood in my place. 
And I cried, " Oh, I come like a king to your 

side 
Though all hell intervene!" "Hist! she may 

be a bride, I 

A mother at peace, with sweet babes at her knee ! 
A babe at her breast and a spouse at her side ! — 
Had I wander'd too long, and had Destiny 
Set mortal between us?" I buried my face 
In my hands, and I moan'd as I stood in my place. 

'T was her year to be young. She was tall, she 
was fair — 

77 



u. 



JOAQUIN Was she pure as the snow on the Alps over 
MILLER there? 

'T was her year to be young. She was queenly 

and tall; 
And I felt she was true, as I lifted my face 
And saw her press down her rich robe to its 

place, 
With a hand white and small as a babe's with a 

doll. 
And her feet ! — why, her feet in the white shining 

sand 
Were so small, 't was a wonder the maiden could 

stand. 
Then she push'd back her hair with a round 

hand that shone 
And flash'd in the light with a white starry stone. 

Then my love she is rich! My love she is fair! 
Is she pure as the snow on the Alps over there ? 
She is gorgeous with wealth! "Thank God, she 

has bread," 
I said to myself. Then I humbled my head 
In gratitude deep. Then I questioned me where 

78 



Was her palace, her parents? What name did JOAQUIN 
she bear? MILLER 

What mortal on earth came nearest her heart? 

Who touch'd the small hand till it thrill'd to a 
smart ? 

'T was her year to be young. She was rich, she 
was fair — 

Was she pure as the snow on the Alps over there ? 

Then she loosed her rich robe that was blue like 

the sea. 
And silken and soft as a baby's new bom. 
And my heart it leap'd light as the sunlight at 

mom 
At the sight of my love in her proud purity. 
As she rose like a Naiad half-robed from the 

sea. 

Then careless and calm as an empress can be 

She loosed and let fall all the raiment of blue. 

As she drew a white robe in a melody 

Of moving white limbs, while between the two, 

Like a rift in the cloud, shone her fair presence 

through. 

79 



JOAQUIN Soon she turn'd, reach'd a hand; then a tall 
MILLER gondolier 

Who had lean'd on his oar, like a long lifted 

spear. 
Shot sudden and swift and all silently. 
And drew to her side as she turn'd from the tide. 
It was odd, such a thing, and I counted it queer 
That a princess like this, whether virgin or bride, 
Should abide thus apart as she bathed in the sea ; 
And I chafed and I chafed, and so unsatisfied. 
That I flutter'd the doves that were perch'd close 

about. 
As I strode up and dovm in dismay and in doubt. 

Swift she stept in the boat on the borders of night 
As an angel might step on that far wonder land 
Of eternal sweet life, which men mis-name Death. 
Quick I called me a craft, and I caught at my 

breath 
As she sat in the boat, and her white baby hand 
Held vestments of gold to her throat, snowy 

white. 
Then her gondola shot, — shot sharp for the shore : 

80 



There was never the sound of a song or of oar, JOAQUIN 
But the doves hurried home in white clouds to MILLER 

Saint Mark, 
Where the brass horses plunge their high manes 

in the dark. 

Then I cried: "Follow fast! Follow fast! Follow 

fast! 
Aye ! thrice double fare, if you follow her true 
To her own palace door ! *' There was plashing 

of oar 

And rattle of rowlock I sat peering through. 

Looking far in the dark, peering out as we passed 
With my soul all alert, bending down, leaning low. 
But only the oaths of the fisherman's crew 
When we jostled them sharp as we sudden shot 

through 
The watery town. Then a deep, distant roar — 
The rattle of rowlock ; the rush of the oar. 

The rattle of rowlock, the rush of the sea .... 
Swift wind like a sword at the throat of us all ! 
I lifted my face, and, far, fitfully 

81 



JOAQUIN The heavens breathed lightning; did Hft and let 
MILLER fall 

As if angels were parting God's curtains. Then 

deep 
And indolent-like, and as if half asleep, 
As if half made angry to move at all. 
The thunder moved. It confronted me. 
It stood like an avalanche poised on a hill, 
I saw^ its black brows. I heard it stand still. 

The troubled sea throbb'd as if rack'd with pain. 
Then the black clouds rose and suddenly rode. 
As a fiery, fierce stallion that knows no rein ; 
Right into the town. Then the thunder strode 
As a giant striding from star to red star. 
Then turn'd upon earth and frantically came. 
Shaking the hollow heaven. And far 
And near red lightning in ribbon and skin 
Did seam and furrow the cloud with flame. 
And write on black heaven Jehovah's name. 

Then lightnings came weaving like shuttlecocks. 
Weaving rent robes of black clouds for death. 

82 



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SANDY, BRUDDER AND THE SCRIBE 



And frightened doves fluttered them home in JOAQUIN 

flocks, MILLER 

And mantled men hied them with gather'd breath. 
Black gondolas scattered as never before, 
And drew like crocodiles up on the shore; 
And vessels at sea stood further at sea, 
And seamen haul'd with a bended knee, 
And canvas came down to left and to right. 
Till ships stood stripp'd as if stripp'd for fight ! 

Then an oath. Then a prayer. Then a gust, with 

rents 
Through the yellow sail'd fishers. Then suddenly 
Came sharp fork'd fire ! Then again thunder fell 
Like the great first gun ! Ah, then there was rout 
Of ships like the breaking of regiments. 
And shouts as if hurled from an upper hell. 

Then tempest ! It lifted, it spun us about. 
Then shot us ahead through the hills of the sea 
As a great steel arrow shot shoreward in wars — 
Then the storm split open till I saw the blown 
stars. 

83 



JOAQUIN On! on! through the foam! through the storm! 
MILLER through the town ! 

She was gone ! She was lost in that wilderness 

Of leprous white palaces Black distress ! 

I stood in my gondola. All up and all down 
We pushed through the surge of the salt-flood street 

Above and below 'T was only the beat 

Of the sea's sad heart .... I leaned, listened ; I 

sat .... 
'T was only the water-rat ; nothing but that ; 
Not even the sea-bird screaming distress, 
As she lost her way in that wilderness. 

I listened all night. I caught at each sound ; 
I clutch'd and I caught as a man that drown'd — 
Only the sullen, low growl of the sea 
Far out the flood-street at the edge of the ships ; 
Only the billow slow licking his lips, 
A dog that lay crouching there watching for me, — 
Growling and showing white teeth all the night ; 
Only a dog, and as ready to bite ; 
Only the waves with their salt-flood tears 
Fretting white stones of a thousand years. 

84 



And then a white dome in the loftiness JOAQUIN 

Of cornice and cross and of glittering spire MILLER 

That thrust to heaven and held the fire 

Of the thunder still ; the bird's distress 

As he struck his wings in that wilderness, 

On marbles that speak, and thrill, and inspire, — 

The night below and the night above ; 

The water-rat building, the sea-lost dove ; 

That one lost, dolorous, lone bird's call. 

The water-rat building, — but that was all. 

Silently, slowly, still up and still down. 
We row'd and we row'd for many an hour, 
By beetling palace and toppling tower. 
In the darks and the deeps of the watery 

town. 
Only the water-rat building by stealth. 
Only the lone bird astray in his flight 
That struck white wings in the clouds of night. 
On spires that sprang from Queen Adria's 

wealth ; 
Only one sea dove, one lost white dove : 
The blackness below, the blackness above ! 

85 



JOAQUIN Then, pushing the darkness from pillar to post, 
MILLER The morning came sullen and gray like a ghost 
Slow up the canal. I lean'd from the prow. 
And listen'd. Not even that dove in distress 
Crying its way through the wilderness ; 
Not even the stealthy old water-rat now, 
Only the bell in the fisherman's tower. 
Slow tolling at sea and telling the hour. 
To kneel to their sweet Santa Barbara 
For tawny fishers at sea, and to pray. 

5F >'*»^ "l^ "P "r •?• 

High over my head, carved cornice, quaint spire, 
And ancient built palaces knock'd their gray 

brows 
Together and frown'd. Then slow-creeping scows 
Scraped the walls on each side. Above me the 

fire 
Of sudden-bom morning came flaming in bars ; 
While up through the chasm I could count the 

stars. 
Oh, pity ! Such ruin ! The dank smell of death 
Crept up the canal: I could scarce take my breath ! 

86 



'T was the fit place for pirates, for women who JOAQUIN 

keep MILLER 

Contagion of body and soul where they sleep 

God's pity ! A white hand now beck'd me 
From an old mouldy door, almost in my reach. 
I sprang to the sill as one wrecked to a beach ; 
I sprang with wide arms : it was she ! it was 

she ! . . . . 
And in such a damn'd place ! And what was her 

trade ? 
To think I had follow'd so faithful, so far 
From eternity's brink, from star to white star, 
To find her, to find her, nor wife nor sweet maid ! 
To find her a shameless poor creature of shame, 
A nameless, lost body, men hardly dared name. 

All alone in her shame, on that damp, dismal 
floor 

She stood to entice me I bow'd me before 

All-conquering beauty. I call'd her my Queen ! 
I told her my love as I proudly had told 

My love had I found her as pure as pure gold. 

87 



JOAQUIN I reach'd her my hands, as fearless, as clean, 
MILLER As man fronting cannon. I cried, "Hasten forth 
To the sun ! There are lands to the south, to the 

north. 
Anywhere where you will. Dash the shame from 

your brow ; 
Come with me, for ever ; and come with me now ! '* 

Why, I 'd have turn'd pirate for her, would have 

seen 
Ships burn'd from the seas, like to stubble from 

field. 
Would I turn from her now ? Why should I now 

yield. 
When she needed me most ? Had I found her a 

queen. 
And beloved by the world, — why, what had I 

done? 
I had woo'd, and had woo'd, and had woo'd till 

I won! 

Then, if I had loved her with gold and fair fame, 

Would not I now love her, and love her the 

same ? 

88 



My soul hath a pride. I would tear out my heart JOAQUIN 
And cast it to dogs, could it play a dog's part! MILLER 

** Don't you know me, my bride of the wide world 
of yore ? 

Why, don't you remember the white milky-way 

Of stars, that we traversed the aeons before ? 

We were counting the colors, we were naming 
the seas 

Of the vaster ones. You remember the trees 

That sway'd in the cloudy white heavens, and 
bore 

Bright crystals of sweets, and the sweet manna- 
dew? 

Why, you smile as you weep, you remember, and 
you. 

You know me ! You know me ! You know me ! 
Yea, 

You know me as if 't were but yesterday ! " 

I told her all things. Her brow took a frown ; 
Her grand Titian beauty, so tall, so serene. 
The one perfect woman, mine own idol queen — 

89 



JOAQUIN Her proud swelling bosom, it broke up and down 
MILLER As she spake, and she shook in her soul as she 

said, 
With her small hands held to her bent, aching 

head: 
" Go back to the world ! Go back, and alone 
Till kind Death comes and makes white his own." 
I said : " I will wait ! I will wait in the pass 
Of death, until Time he shall break his glass." 

Then I cried, "Yea, here where the gods did 

love, 
Where the white Europa was won, — she rode 
Her milk-white bull through these same warm 

seas, — 
Yea, here in the land where huge Hercules, 
With the lion's heart and the heart of the dove. 
Did walk in his naked great strength, and strode 
In the sensuous air with his lion's skin 
Flapping and fretting his knotted thews ; 
Where Theseus did wander, and Jason 

cruise, — 
Yea, here let the life of all lives begin. 

90 



Yea ! Here where the Orient balms breathe {.,, , ^^^^ 
i.f MILLER 

lire, 

Where heaven is kindest, where all God's blue 

Seems a great gate open'd to welcome you. 

Come, rise and go forth, my empress, my wife." 

Then spake her great soul, so grander far 

Than I had believed on that outermost star ; 

And she put by her tears, and calmly she said, 

With hands still held to her bended head : 

"I will go through the doors of death and wait 

For you on the innermost side of death's gate. 

"Thank God that this life is but a day's span. 
But a wayside inn for weary, worn man — 
A night and a day ; and, to-morrow, the spell 
Of darkness is broken. Now, darling, farewell!" 
I caught at her robe as one ready to die — 
** Nay, touch not the hem of my robe — it is red 
With sins that your own sex heap'd on my 

head! 
Now turn you, yes, turn ! But remember how I 
Wait weeping, in sackcloth, the while I wait 
Inside death's door, and watch at the gate." 

91 



JOAQUIN I cried yet again, how I cried, how I cried, 
MILLER Reaching face, reaching hands as a drowning 

man might. 
She drew herself back, put my two hands aside, 
Half turned as she spoke, as one turned to the 

night : 
Speaking low, speaking soft as a wind through 

the wall 
Of a ruin where mold and night masters all : 

" I shall live my day, live patient on through 
The life that man hath compelled me to. 
Then turn to my mother, sweet earth, and 

pray 
She keep me pure to the Judgment Day ! 
I shall sit and wait as you used to do. 
Will wait the next life, through the whole life 

through. 
I shall sit all alone, I shall wait alway; 
I shall wait inside of the gate for you. 
Waiting, and counting the days as I wait ; 
Yea, wait as that beggar that sat by the gate 
Of Jerusalem, waiting the Judgment Day." 

92 



THE WORLD IS A BETTER WORLD JOAQUIN 
Aye, the world is a better old world to-day! MILLER 
And a great good mother this earth of ours ; 
Her white to-morrows are a white stairway 
To lead us up to the star-lit flowers — 
The spiral to-morrows that one by one 
We climb and we climb in the face of the sun. 

Aye, the world is a braver old world to-day ! 
For many a hero dares bear with wrong — 
Will laugh at wrong and will turn away ; 
Will whistle it down the wind with a song — 
Dares slay the wrong with his splendid scorn ! 
The bravest old hero that ever was bom ! 

THE LIGHT OF CHRISTS FACE 
Behold how glorious ! Behold 
The light of Christ's face ; and such light ! 
The Moslem, Buddhist, as of old. 
Gropes helpless on in hopeless night. 
But lo ! where Christ comes, crowned v^th flame. 
Ten thousand triumphs in Christ's name. 
Ten thousand triumphs in Christ's name. 

93 



But lo ! where Christ comes crowned with flame, 
m 4 , 1 1 r- R ^^^ thousand triumphs in Christ's name, 
Ten thousand triumphs in Christ's name. 

Elijah's chariot of fire 
Chained Hghtnings harnessed to his car ! 
Jove's thunders bridled by a wire — 
Call unto nations " here we are ! " 
Lo ! all the world one sea of light. 
Save where the Paynim walks in night, 
Lo, all the world one sea of light, 
Lo, all the world one sea of light. 
Save where the Paynim walks in night. 
Lo, all the world one sea of light. 

What more ? What sermons like to these ; 
This light of Christ's face, power, speed, 
In these full rounded centuries. 
To prove the Christ, the Christ in deed ? 
Yea, Christ is life, and Christ is light. 
And anti-Christ is death and night. 
Yea, Christ is life, and Christ is light. 
Yea, Christ is life, and Christ is light, 

94 



And anti-Christ is death and night, JOAQUIN 

Yea, Christ is life, and Christ is light. MILLER 

OUR HEROES OF TO-DAY 
With high face held to her ultimate star, 
With swift feet set to her mountains of gold, 
This new-built world, where the wonders are. 
She has built new ways from the ways of old. 

Her builders of worlds are workers with hands; 
Her true world-builders are builders of these. 
The engines, the plows; writing poems in sands 
Of gold in our golden Hesperides. 

I reckon these builders as gods among men : 
I count them creators, creators who knew 
The thrill of dominion, of conquest, as when 
God set His stars spinning their spaces of blue. 

A song for the groove, and a song for the wheel. 
And a roaring song for the rumbling car; 
But away with the pomp of the soldier's steel. 
And away forever with the trade of war. 

95 



JOAQUIN The hero of time is the hero of thought; 
MILLER The hero who lives is the hero of peace; 
And braver his battles than ever were 

fought, 
From Shiloh back to the battles of Greece. 

The hero of heroes is the engineer ; 
The hero of height and of gnome-built deep, 
Whose only fear is the brave man's fear 
That some one waiting at home might weep. 

The hero we love in this land to-day 

Is the hero who lightens some fellow-man's 
load — 

Who makes of the mountain some pleasant high- 
way; 

Who makes of the desert some blossom-sown 
road. 

Then hurrah ! for the land of the golden downs. 
For the golden land of the silver horn ; 
Her heroes have built her a thousand towns. 
But never destroyed her one blade of com. 

96 



FATHER DAMIEN JOAQUIN 

The best of all heroes that ever may be, MILLER 

The best and the bravest in peace or in war 
Since that lorn sad night in Gethsemane — 
Horns of the moon or the five-horned star? 
Why, merely a Belgian monk, and the least, 
The lowliest — merely a peasant-born priest. , 

And how did he fight? And where did he fall? 
With what did he conquer in the name of God ? 
The cross ! And he conquered more souls than all 
Famed captains that ever fought fire-shod. 
Now, lord of the sapphire-set sea and skies, 
Far under his Southern gold Cross he lies. 

Far under the fire-sown path of the sun 
He sleeps with his lepers ; but a world is his ! 
His great seas chorus and his warm tides run 
To dulcet and liquid soft cadences. 
And, glories to come or great deeds gone, 
I 'd rather be he than Napoleon. 

He rests with his lepers, for whom he died ; 

97 



TO AQUINThe lorn outcasts in their cooped up isle, 
MlLLEpWhile Slander purses her lips in pride 

And proud men gather their robes and smile. 
They mock at his deeds in their daily talk, 
Deriding his work in their Christian (?) walk. 

But the great wide, honest, the wise, big world ; 

Or sapphire splendors or midnight sun. 

It is asking the while that proud lips are curled. 

Why do not ye as that monk hath done ? 

Why do not ye, if so braver than he. 

Some one brave deed that the world might see? 

LINCOLN PARK 
Unwalled it lies, and open as the sun 
When God swings wide the dark doors of the 

East. 
Oh, keep this one spot, still keep this one. 
Where tramp or banker, layman or high priest, 
May equal meet before the face of God : 
Yea, equals stand upon that common sod 
Where they shall one day equals be 
Beneath, for aye, and all eternity. 

98 



JOAQUIN tells us '* Olive Leaves" are poems JOAQUIN 
written in fulfillment of a promise made in re- MILLER 
sponse to an appeal from his brother, "who fell 
in battle front upon the Delaware," for "some 
gentler things — some songs for Peace. Mid all 
your songs for men, one song for God." "The 
promise given," he tells us, "The dark-browed 
mother. Death, bent down her face to his, and 
he was born to Him." 

For tender sweetness and religious fervor, the fol- 
lowing poems leave little to be desired. 

THE LAST SUPPER 

And when they had sung a hymn they went out into the 
Mount of Olives. 

What song sang the twelve with the Saviour 
When finished the sacrament wine ? 
Were they bowed and subdued in behavior, 
Or bold as made bold with a sign ? 

Were the hairy breasts strong and defiant ? 

Were the naked arms brawny and strong ? 

99 



JOAQUIN Were the bearded lips lifted reliant, 
MILLER Thrust forth and full sturdy with song? 

What sang they ? What sweet song of Zion 
With Christ in their midst like a crown? 
While here sat Saint Peter, the lion ; 
And there like a lamb, with head down, 

Sat Saint John, with his silken and raven 
Rich hair on his shoulders, and eyes 
Lifting up to the faces unshaven 
Like a sensitive child's in surprise. 

Was the song as strong fishermen swinging 
Their nets full of hope to the sea ? 
Or low, like the ripple wave singing 
Sea songs on their loved Galilee ? 

Were they sad with foreshadow of sorrows. 

Like the birds that sing low when the breeze 

Is tip-toe with tales of to-morrows, — 

Of earthquakes and sinking of seas ? 

100 



Ah! soft was their song as the waves are JOAQUIN 

That fall in musical moans; MILLER 

And sad I should say as the winds are 
That blow by the white grave-stones. 

FAITH 
There were whimsical turns of the waters, 
There were rhythmical talks of the sea, 
There were gather'd the darkest-eyed daughters 
Of men, by the deep Galilee. 

A blowing full sail, and a parting 
From multitudes, living in Him, 
A trembling of lips and tears starting 
From eyes that look'd downward and dim. 

A mantle of night and a marching 
Of storms, and a sounding of seas. 
Of furrows of foam and of arching 
Black billows ; a bending of knees ; 

The rising of Christ — an entreating — 

Hands reach'd to the seas as he saith, 

101 



JOAQUIN *'Have Faith!" And all seas are repeating, 
MILLER "Have Faith! Have Faith! Have Faith!" 

HOPE 
What song is vv^ell sung not of sorrovs^ ? 
What triumph well won without pain ? 
What virtue shall be, and not borrow 
Bright luster from many a stain ? 

What birth has there been without travail ? 
What battle well won without blood ? 
What good shall earth see without evil 
Ingamer'd as chaff with the good? 

Lo ! the Cross set in rocks by the Roman, 
And nourish'd by blood of the Lamb, 
And water'd by tears of the woman. 
Has flourish'd, has spread like a palm ; 

Has spread in the frosts, and far regions 
Of snows in the North, and South sands. 
Where never the tramp of his legions 

Was heard, or reached forth his red hands. 

102 



Be thankful; the price and the payment, JOAQUIN 

The birth, the privations and scorn, MILLER 

The cross, and the parting of raiment 
Are finish'd. The star brought us mom. 

Look starward ; stand far and unearthy, 
Free soul'd as a banner unfurl'd. 
Be worthy, O brother, be worthy ! 
For a God was the price of the world. 

CHARITY 

Her hands were clasped downward and doubled, 
Her head was held down and depressed. 
Her bosom, like white billows troubled, 
Fell fitful and rose in unrest ; 

Her robes were all dust, and disorder'd 
Her glory of hair, and her brow. 
Her face, that had lifted and lorded, 
Fell pallid and passionless now. 

She heard not accusers that brought her 
In mockery hurried to Him, 

103 



JOAQUIN Nor heeded, nor said, nor besought her 
MILLER With eyes lifted doubtful and dim. 

All crush'd and stone-cast in behavior, 
She stood as a marble would stand. 
Then the Saviour bent down, and the Saviour 
In silence wrote on in the sand. 

What wrote He ? How^ fondly one lingers 
And questions, what holy command 
Fell down from the beautiful fingers 
Of Jesus, like gems in the sand. 

O better the scion uncherished 
Had died ere a note or device 
Of battle was fashion'd, than perish'd 
This only line written by Christ. 

He arose and look'd on the daughter 

Of Eve, like a delicate flower. 

And He heard the revilers that brought her; 

Men stormy, and strong as a tower. 

104 



And He said, "She has sinned; let the blame- JOAQUIN 

less MILLER 

Come forward and cast the first stone!" 
But they, they fled shamed and yet shameless ; 
And she, she stood white and alone. 

Who now shall accuse and arraign us ? 
What man shall condemn and disown ? 
Since Christ has said only the stainless 
Shall cast at his fellows a stone. 

For what man can bare us his bosom. 
And touch with his fore-finger there. 
And say, *"Tis as snow, as a blossom"? 
Beware of the stainless, beware ! 

O woman, bom first to believe us ; 
Yea, also born first to forget ; 
Bom first to betray and deceive us ; 
Yet first to repent and regret ! 

O first then in all that is human. 
Yea ! first where the Nazarene trod, 

105 



JOAQUIN O woman! O beautiful woman, 
MILLER Be then first in the Kingdom of God! 

BEYOND JORDAN 

And they came to him, mothers of Judah, 
Dark eyed and in splendor of hair. 
Bearing down over shoulders of beauty, 
And bosoms half hidden, half bare ; 

They brought him their babes and besought him 
Half kneeling, with suppliant air. 
To bless the brown cherubs they brought him, 
With holy hands laid in their hair. 

Then reaching his hands he said lowly, 
"Of such is my Kingdom " ; and then 
Took little brown babes in the holy 
White hands of the Saviour of men ; 

Held them close to his heart and caress'd them. 
Put his face down to theirs as in prayer. 
Put their hands to his neck, and so blessed them. 
With baby hands hid in his hair. 

106 



so HERE ENDETH JOAQUIN MILLER & GEORGE 
WHARTON JAMES, AS DONE INTO A BOOK BY 
THE ROYCROFTERS AT THEIR SHOP WHICH IS 
IN EAST AURORA, N. Y., OCTOBER, A. D. MCMIII. 



DEC 



-1 \9t*3 



